Wild Blackberry Jelly

It's been three years since we've had a good harvest of wild black raspberries here. It takes a lot of rain in the spring and summer to make these flavorful wild berries come to life. You can imagine how happy I was to see the small patch we have in our thicket blooming and beginning to fruit up in early July. 

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I picked our vines clean, foraged down in the woods in the patch I last picked in 2022 and spent hours picking in the field at my sister-in-law Chris' parents' house. I picked in the early morning to get ahead of the heat.

One morning in late July as I was deep in the thicket at Chris' homestead, I heard two coyotes calling to one another up on the hills on either side of the field. It was haunting, beautiful, close and a little scary. I should have left. But I didn't. Because these berries are not guaranteed every year and I was on my second big container full of them. Oh the things we do for jelly.

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Ingredients: wild blackberry juice, lemon juice, natural fruit pectin, sugar